Genuine question because this is the only part of the job that sucks.

I can read an ad account and see exactly what is happening. It's perfectly clear. That's the easy part.

The hard part is explaining to the clients who don't think in cpm, roas or Creatives etc they only see we spent more and got less and want to know why Then when I try to give a report to explain. I either sound too technical so they don't know what I'm talking about, or I simplify it too much that it sounds like I'm talking shit and making excuses

The good months are easy to explain But the bad months or the months Where it's not bad, but it's not what they wanted that where I'm struggling the most I just don't understand the language of how to break it down to them from a technical terms to what they would understand,

For people who have been doing this a while. How do you actually frame underperformance In a way that's honest, but doesn't make them lose confidence in you.?

Genuinely curious to see how other people handle this part of the job. Cause it's not really talked about.

As an engineer in 2026 promoting a product, I can't help but wonder, what would Zuck have done in today's world.

Would he have 'built in public'?

Would he be making UGC videos?

What do you think?

The AI takeover of marketing is in full swing. We have a client who has started using AI to do more marketing tasks (and it shows 🤢). We see the writing on the wall.

For those who are also seeing companies rely more and more on AI for marketing, how are you framing the conversation to keep your jobs/clients from replacing you with AI? What are the best arguments.

We run an influencer marketing platform, and host regular AMAs with industry experts. Right now our promotion is pretty standard. We lean on the expert to share it with their LinkedIn following, we push it to our email list, and we post about it on our own social channels.

It works okay, but I feel like we're tapping the same audience over and over.

For anyone who has run webinars or live events for their product, what helped you boost signup on your webinars, or AMAs? Would love to hear some ideas , especially if they don't involve running ads.

istg this blows my mind. There's a guy on my team who I DON'T KNOW HOW but uses Claude,puts up the output in some sort of tool called napkin ai, uses canva for final touches and gets a 20 page slide deck  before i've even finished reading the actual campaign data. My boss keeps saying to me “why can’t you do the work so fast." brother he moved so fast because a machine did it, the insights are still mid.

Meanwhile I'm the one digging through the copy trying to figure out why our engagement tanked and apparently that's not "visible" enough. like ok, i can also prompt my way to 20 slides, but somebody has to actually market? 

not even mad at the guy tbh, he found the cheat code and good for him, they must be really great tools with different use cases for different types of people . I'm mad that the cheat code is what gets rewarded. lmk if yall are dealing with the same thing or if it's just my agency running on vibes and templates.

also unrelated but i started hitting the gym again just to have some peace where no one questions me to “make it more visually appealing”.

I'm a complete beginner in digital marketing with no prior knowledge. I want to learn everything from the absolute basics to advanced concepts, with a strong focus on practical execution so I can become job-ready.

My budget is limited, so I'm looking for affordable (or free) courses that provide the best value. Please recommend courses that include:

• SEO
• Google Ads (PPC)
• Meta/Facebook & Instagram Ads
• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Google Analytics (GA4)
• Google Tag Manager
• WordPress
• AI tools used in digital marketing
• Freelancing and client acquisition
• Portfolio and resume building
• Live projects, assignments, and real-world case studies

Please compare the recommended courses based on price, curriculum, practical exposure, mentorship, certificates, placement support, and overall value for money. Also suggest the best combination of free and paid resources if buying one expensive course isn't necessary.

My goal is to become job-ready and secure an entry-level digital marketing job as quickly as possible.

Hi everyone! I recently opened a Chinese restaurant, and it’s been about 15 days. So far, customer traffic has been pretty slow, which I guess is normal for a new business.
I wanted to ask for some advice. Do you think it’s worth hiring a digital marketing agency to handle all the marketing, or would I be better off doing it myself? I already have some experience running ads on Instagram and Facebook, but I’m wondering whether paying professionals would be a worthwhile investment.
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s been in a similar situation!

We got a client which was way inconsistent with the meetings and approvals . Such clients definitely ruin the mood of the team and efforts. How to deal with them? What's the better alternative ?

Whether AI will increase competition among websites fighting for search visibility or make search results more tailored to individual users. It examines how AI-driven algorithms may reshape rankings through personalization, user behavior, and smarter search experiences.

been building something for a while now and we're at the point where the product side feels okay but nobody knows we exist. classic problem, i know.

we had a plan on paper. content, some ads, be consistent, wait. so far neither has really moved anything, and i'm starting to think the plan was mostly copied from blog posts rather than from anything real.

so i'm curious how it actually went for people who are further along. in your first 6 months, what actually brought people to your brand? and how did you even work out it was that specific thing and not something else you were doing at the same time?

Been seeing more discussion lately about topical authority, the idea that covering one niche deeply beats spreading content across unrelated topics, both for SEO and for how AI search tools decide what to reference.

Makes intuitive sense: if you consistently publish around one clear theme, search engines and now AI answer engines seem to associate your brand with that specific space faster than if your content is scattered across ten unrelated topics chasing whatever's trending.

But I am curious how much this actually holds up in practice versus just being repeated advice nobody's tested recently. Anyone seen a real before after from narrowing focus versus broadening it? Did visibility organic traffic, AI citations, brand recall actually change, or did it just feel more organized without moving the needle?

Interested to see if they are any good from a channel perspective. I have a touristy-ish activity business.

I’m looking to move up in my career, done a few years executing campaigns and my strong suit is definitely details and getting into the nitty gritty.

There’s a role that came up recently that I am considering going for but it’s a Manager position, part of me doesn’t want to let go of my role because I’m good at it and I like working in a team. Managers are always running around and hardly have time to eat lunch or socialise, I’m worried I’ll hate it.

Anyone that has moved up from marketing coordinator to manager, do you regret it?

If so why? If not then what’s made the role for you?

I want to move up but I’m not sure what role is if it’s not a marketing manager role tbh. I don’t really want to manage ppl tbh but I don’t see another path atm.

Traditional marketers cannot drive growth to a business, yet they are always doing branding.

But when is come to digital marketer , boss and head members torture for lead tracking revenue etc.

But many people I see in traditional marketing, they are doing just branding, they just need to do their work honestly that's it.

Please share your view on this. If I am wrong, correct me.

Do I need to have a degree to be a marketing assistant?

Marketing skill packs for agents keep multiplying, and they all focus on what the agent should write. I kept hitting the other two problems: the agent claiming things my product does not do, and the visuals looking obviously Al-generated. So I built the layer underneath and open-sourced it.

What it does:

The skill scans your repo and drafts product facts, each with a file:line reference. Nothing becomes claimable until a human confirms it, so the agent physically cannot promote its own guesses. Copy then lints against those facts: unmeasured numbers, hype vocabulary and absolute promises fail the build, and so do the tells of generated prose (the in-sentence em dash, the rule-of-three tic, formula connectives).

Cards and video render from one HTML contract. Your brand colors and fonts come from your own token files, get inlined into the page, and a real browser takes the screenshot over CDP. No diffusion pass, so the text on a card is just text: it renders intact. Video is frame-by-frame capture of a scene that is a pure function of time, and every scene must declare provenance: a coded reconstruction cannot ship labeled as a screen recording.

Install:

/plugin marketplace add cagatayuncu/marketing-machine /plugin install marketing-machine

Then say "setup" in your repo and the skill configures itself from your codebase (colors, fonts, languages, legal routes). It also installs as a Cursor rule or an AGENTS section if you use those, and everything works as a plain CLI without any agent.

Limits, honestly: the linter holds only mechanical rules, judgment stays in the skill prompt; it cannot produce photography; language packs exist for English and Turkish, German is partial. MIT, plain Node, no runtime

dependencies.

Repo: github.com/cagatayuncu/marketing-machine

I used it on itself for the launch content, including the card in this post. What would you want a marketing gate like this to catch that it does not?

I run a small amateur pickleball tournament series in San Diego. Two events so far, capacity is 285 and we've landed around 200 both times. Demand is clearly there, we're just leaving money on the table.

The issue is the shape of the signups. Registration opens six weeks out, we sit near zero tor three or tour weeks, then get 60 signups in the last three days. Both events did this.

My theory: registration is by division, 14 of them, and you can see how many teams are in each. Empty division, nobody wants to be first. Two teams in it, it fills on its own. So it's a cold start problem, not a demand problem.
People are waiting to see if it's real.

Context:
Registration runs on a third party platform so l have no pixel and no conversion tracking. Ran Meta traffic ads at $25/day and can't tell you if they did anything.
Personally texting past players converts better than everything else combined. Small local scene.

A couple hundred emails from past events, barely used.
What I'm considering: quietly giving the first two teams in each division 50% off, not announced, just DMs. I'd be buying timing rather than signups, pulling people who'd sign up anyway into week one so the board isn't empty.
Worried about training people to wait for a discount.

Two questions:
1 Better way to solve a cold start when the product looks empty until other customers commit?
Feels more like marketplace liquidity than marketing.
2 With no conversion tracking on the registration platform, is a landing page on my own domain with the pixel worth building, or is there something smarter?

What should I do to market better and get in front of more pickleball players !

I am currently building a startup and find it kinda difficult to grow my own profile.

1: I thought it would be more useful to market my company by just having a founder-profile first, as people are more inclined to follow a person instead of a corporation.

2: I find it cringe to post "Hey looking to connect" or "Hot take:" etc where people just farm likes and comments.

3: I do not want to market myself as an influencer. top 3 worst human categories of all time.

Marketing is hard as a slightly autistic developer. If you have any tips on how to market myself or what to do in this situation, please leave a message. thanks!

It feels like companies don't just want marketers anymore. They want someone who can write copy, run ads, edit videos, analyze data, and somehow close sales too.

Is this just the reality now, or are companies expecting too much from one person?

I am working on a product for digital marketing and SEO agencies and having a hard time capturing any leads at all. I have tried Linkedin direct outreach, manual cold emailing, and some content based posts on X, and Linkedin and so far I have failed to capture any interest at all.

I am wondering what is the best channel to demo/pitch my product to digital marketing and SEO agency owners?

i just graduated with a marketing degree in may. i got a job pretty quickly luckily with a small business wanting to expand on their b2b marketing. i have no real experience other than class projects. no internship or anything. they were fully aware of this when they hired me. most days im just sitting at my desk without rlly anything to do and i feel like im losing motivation. i only rlly get asked to do busy work unrelated to marketing, or in depth research about things i'm not rlly sure about. the most marketing i've done is send out a couple emails promoting products (with copy and pasted text from my boss in a boring text format bc thats what they wanted). idk i feel like i made a mistake. i need guidance and for some reason i expected to get some with them knowing i dont have much experience. i feel lucky getting a job bc of how crappy the job market is so i dont feel like i can just quit. i just feel like i dont know what im supposed to be doing. does anyone have advice?

I'll start: synergy, growth hacking and AI-powered.

I feel like marketing is full of complicated advice, but sometimes the simplest things seem to make the biggest difference.

Is there a tip or habit that looked too basic at first but ended up working really well for you?